College hitters must adjust to new bats

George Watson

Sunday

Jan 30, 2011 at 12:01 AM

Joba Chamberlain, Huston Street and Dallas Braden are just a few of the professional pitchers who came to Lubbock and had unfavorable memories upon leaving, unable to keep pitches in the yard or prevent the opponents from racking up huge run totals.

And for all those pitchers who have come in and struggled, there is one entity that seems bent on turning Dan Law Field into a pitcher’s park — the NCAA.

Beginning with the 2011 season, the new NCAA-mandated bat regulations go into effect as all aluminum bats used in the college game must meet the Batted-Ball Coefficient of Restitution, or BBCOR, regulation. No longer will the standard used to measure how fast a pitched ball comes off a bat be measured by the Ball Exit Speed Ratio, or BESR, number. The idea is to slow the exit speed of batted balls off aluminum bats to make the game safer by making aluminum bats behave more like wood. The side effect is the regulations are expected to cut down on offense by reducing the size of the “sweet spot.”

“Without question you’re going to see a change in the scope of the game,” Texas A&M coach Rob Childress said. “I’m looking forward to seeing the first month of the season and how the changes are gong to be. I’ll be checking the boxscores nationally and look at the bottom of the boxscores and see the time changes and how long the games are played.”

The new changes can be visualized in terms of a bat’s trampoline effect. When a ball hits a bat, there is more give to the aluminum than there is the wood, thus creating more of a trampoline effect when the ball is redirected. The more trampoline effect there is, the faster the ball will be coming off the bat, thus the farther it can travel.

The new BBCOR bats cut down on that trampoline effect. Colleges began using them in the fall and talk of how they’ve deadened the ball has been prevalent among college coaches.

“You’re kidding yourself if you don’t admit there is some change,” Kansas State coach Brad Hill said.

Even though the new bat regulations didn’t take effect until Jan. 1, most colleges began using the bats in the fall, with the effect apparently bigger for some schools than others.

“What we found is guys who can hit, who’ve proven they can hit, made the adjustments after about three or four days and kept hitting,” Texas Tech coach Dan Spencer said. “The home runs are going to be down just because the ball flat out isn’t going to go as far. The days of guys hitting 20 or 30 home runs is over.”

Spencer and Childress both agreed the bat regulations might not affect their teams as much simply because neither team is reliant on the home run to score, preferring to get guys on base, be aggressive on the basepaths and hit balls into the gaps instead of over the fence.

“I think it’s going to be good for our offense,” Spencer said. “We play in a park that is a big park and there’s going to be gaps that will be open. Then you think about how you play against people and the outfielders aren’t going to play as deep, so with line drives that might have been cut off for a single, they’ll get into the gaps and now it’s a triple because we can run. I think it will benefit us as a whole.”

Tech’s pitching, which has finished in last place in the Big 12 in ERA the past four seasons and five of the last six, could be a big beneficiary from the reduced number of bloop hits that fell just because they came off an aluminum bat. Spencer said he’s in favor of the rule change, while Childress and Hill felt it was unnecessary.

Tech center fielder Barrett Barnes said it could actually end up making hitters better.

“I think it will have some effect but it really makes you more focused,” said Barnes, who last year hit 14 home runs and drove in 53 to earn Big 12 Freshman of the Year honors. “You’re going to really have to square the ball up and take a good approach in every at bat against everybody. The guys who have power are still going to get the home runs. But you really have to optimize your approach on every opportunity. You’ve got to handle your business and play the game the right way.”

To comment on this story:

george.watson@lubbockonline.com • 766-2166

courtney.linehan@lubbockonline.com • 766-8735

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